Deadlocked
by Demyrie
Summary: TFA. War is his life, and the life of his team. Sari is empty, and Bulkhead perished years ago. Prowl seeks silence and relief in space, but Lockdown offers him something a little more... permanent, and little more enjoyable: control. LockdownxProwl. DARK


A/N: Somehow, I started out loving this one. Now, not so much. It's too long, but I'm too sick of it to fix it D: But I seriously love the way Prowl and Lockdown talk to each other.

Prowl has leader/daddy issues. Oh, and my take on Lockdown is a bit… chatty. It's a verbal manifestation of his SEXY confidence, but also his LOOONELY stellar-cycles on a gaddamn tin can ship. So… yay?

_Warnings: Violence, war images, trauma, non-consensual ideas, explicit mechanical groping/near-sex, and a mention of SHARKTICONS._

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Deadlocked

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It was a darker time on Earth.

Perhaps it was the darkest time, but such an assumption would have brazenly dared the night to deepen and swallow them whole. So Prowl kept his silence. It was the only thing he had left—his silence and his solitude--and they had lost so much.

The war against the Decepticons had escalated for years—seven grey years—and finally left them in the wreckage of Detroit with little hope and fewer options. While pain was ever-present, the first real loss hit them five years in. Isaac Sumdac was crushed in an ambush while working intel for the Autobot assault, and fourteen-year-old Sari became quiet and strange after seeing her father and creator's unrecognizable body peel away from the girders of the blackened warehouse. The following morning, the only thing left undiminished in her quaking female body was a capacity for hatred.

She seared a patch of her artificial skin away and carved an Autobot symbol into her sparking midnight exostructure with a kitchen knife. An agonizing circuit snapped into existence every time the conductive tool touched her plating, so the act nearly killed her, but two years had drained away and still the crest glowed, as much a part of her as her father. She was truly one of them, now, and they mourned it every day.

Bulkhead went offline valiantly.

Bumblebee insisted that it should have been him to go, and it was true. Bulkhead—loving, gluttonous Bulkhead—had thrown himself into Blitzwing's cite and taken the blast for his best friend. There was little they could do: his spark-chamber was nothing but a delicate silicone eggshell, smoke-marbled and smashed through the center when they found it. Truly, it _should_ have been Bumblebee, but what began as a piteous mantra in the night for the traumatized 'bot warped into a hissing attack: a source of envy that Bulkhead was not forced to live through this darkening reality. Bumblebee no longer grinned, played or laughed, but clawed out at his friends as he would his enemies, sunny jibes long-ossified into barbs.

Sari was the only one who could physically touch him.

Ratchet was powering down, little by little. Some days were worse than others: on the worst of them, he would fall into fits of uncontrollable stasis, internal pressure dropping and tensors slackening without warning. He would remain stalled until one of them found him crumpled on the ground, or crashed over his scruffy projects, electro-pulse a mere whisper of static. A quick jolt was all it would take to bring him back online, but it still wounded the crusty Medibot internally, more than he could bear. A century ago, he'd been getting old: now, in seven short years, he was long past it.

He waited for death the way someone waited for a late train.

Optimus' left optic-slot had scarred over: the wait for a replacement had dragged on too long, and his self-preserving wiring had snaked out to cover the battle wound. Megatron kept the dull blue chip mounted on his front, snapped into the Decepticon crest. The war had changed him from a friend into a harsh leader, and with that change went their last hope of being happy together after it was all over.

Their darling little family was collapsing from within, and Sari struggled to hold them together, hulking cold insufficiencies and all, with her tiny hands. All of their actions were modified malfunctions, and every move, every word could be called into question, but there were too many questions already. Each coped with the misery their own particular way, all of them fighting the best they could in the empty city and for their empty Sari, but they were missing something. Rather, something had been taken from each of them: and while Prowl had always been known for his lone-wolf ways, a 'bot had few places to turn to for relief now that home wasn't home anymore.

He began to look up.

-.-.-.-.-.-

Mods were an essential part of survival.

No 'bot could go into battle with a deadly enemy sporting nothing but his plating and a strong Spark and expect to come out online. The mods, however, like the current times, were growing more complex and increasingly harder to handle. Prowl needed them for his personal missions, but the days when he could remove them himself with a quick EMP burst and physical force were long gone. Every attachment was a small surgery, conducted in the exposed wires of his substructure and handled by a professional. The 'bot he had found for the job was accomplished, steady-servoed, _mostly_ silent and quick. Nearly perfect, on the surface.

The only thing said professional lacked was… professionalism.

It had begun as any other session, but, twenty cycles into the routine disconnections, another unwelcome, goading finger of electricity wormed past the Autobot's exostructure and brushed a tender circuit. A very tender, sensation-focused circuit. Prowl flinched, clamping down on the resulting exotic ripple, then frowned the feeling away using a meditative shortcut.

Aggravating wasn't the word for it: that would have been too simple. Lockdown had an alarming command of sensory circuitry from all of his trophy extractions, and his crusty indiscretion made the skill something to fear. His physical 'gags' were intensely creative and in ill taste: while the surgeries were both delicate and invasive, the liberties the bounty hunter took with Prowl's personal space were beyond excuse.

Prowl had been periodically jetting up to the Undecided's looming ship for at least five solar-cycles, and thus far, through a great amount of loftiness and concentration, had managed to abstain from establishing a rapport with the other Cybertronian. He found could easily deal with Lockdown's provocative nature when pushing through the routine of borrowing and returning the simple mods, but this _involvement_—this intimate, one megacycle surgery—kept Prowl from his beloved distance. Also, much like the chinks in his armor, it left him… vulnerable to the hunter's whims.

Over the past months, Lockdown's advances—as advances they were, approaching with a slow but deft dominance--had escalated from goading to… another nature. Every surgery included a sly M-pulse here or a soft pinch there. Each casual assault seemed to echo and settle in the thin, dry space air of Lockdown's shop: unquestioned, and flavored with a nasty grin hovering somewhere around Prowl's knees.

For grim fear of offending his unscrupulous dealer and thereby cutting his only link to survival, Prowl had kept his silence: something he had become incredibly good at. But breaking a long ritual of toleration and silence (the sounds of varying alloys as each layer was removed had become like a clock, a soothing ceremony of empty space that kept him from explosions and scarred earth ground—physical meditation where he could _feel_ himself in all his well-crafted pieces--) was more than required when, for the third time in two cycles, Lockdown's digit slipped around his left pelvic-joint and _stroked_.

"That is more than enough, Lockdown," Prowl snapped, glaring at the wall ahead of him: he was ever-mindful of the intense intricacy of this assault on his system and the stillness it required, and so limited the heat to his voice. "I did not come here to be--"

He tensed, struggling for a word that wouldn't sound ridiculous and undignified in his smooth vocals but still convey the entirely ridiculous connotations of those scarred servos on his plates--

"Fondled?" Lockdown supplied slyly, leering up from Prowl's heel-struts. Prowl twitched as another plate of armor fell to the floor of the shop, clenching his mandibular against an unwelcome surge of heat.

Lockdown couldn't see the problem.

After all, he had waited for five long stellar-cycles before properly fondling the kid. He felt his steel-plated fortitude should be rewarded, not called down. Still, there was something to enjoy in all stages of the process: to see Prowl both unyielding and quivering with scrambled indignation was beyond priceless… not to mention the buzz he got from their piecemeal exchanges. Lockdown treasured his ability to lock the young mech up with nothing but words. Really, he had so many _dilemmas_, so many lock-ups: it came, Lockdown supposed, with having morals. Thankfully, he hadn't had those for a long, long time.

They always left a nasty taste in his mouth when they went south.

Lockdown began another flank-seaming with a thin smile, nimble digits (the classic hook on his right had been replaced by a mod crafted with three-fingered dexterity) massaging and nudging the slick black plates until they clicked. Waiting, because their classic silence had netted a few healthy cracks, and that made it easier for a testy, usually wordless ninjabot to break. He was not disappointed.

"At least you admit that you're toying with me," Prowl said stiffly.

"'Course I am," Lockdown chuckled. He took his servos off of Prowl's sleek half-samurai body to gesture at the red-lit shelves lining the room. His trophy-mods were arranged meticulously floor to ceiling, each one painstakingly maintained and strapped down. "Just scan around—I'm a 'bot who likes his toys."

"Of which I am not one."

The bounty hunter raised his brows, stalled by the sudden chilliness. He'd been called a lot of things over his time, but a liar wasn't one of them. He was honest: and Prowl, when provoked, was scathingly direct. Together, they were something short of a train-wreck in 'conversation', netting collision after collision, but Lockdown wasn't going to leave this one to the junkyard. He'd worked too hard for that.

Lockdown looked up at the motionless Autobot, pausing a moment before capping a deep, rusty sigh.

"I think its time we had that Spark-to-Spark, kid."

Prowl did not look at him. The ninjabot's chin remained high, his optics elsewhere, but he remained trapped in Lockdown's steady servos—and his sideways verbal invasions--until the job was done. The problem was, Lockdown also controlled when Lockdown finished. Prowl made a low, terse sound as the bounty hunter cleared his throat.

"I wanna know. What do you come here for?"

Prowl snorted impatiently.

"You know my modifications are too complex--"

"No, no. I'm not talkin' function," the older mech stopped him, shaking his head with vague amusement. When Prowl offered nothing more than a hostile silence, Lockdown patted the Autobot's bare leg with a reasonable, condescending sound. "How about this? If it makes it any easier, I'll go first."

Lockdown picked up his tools again and started in, magnifying lens popping out from his black brow and wheezing into place over his right optic.

"I'll admit it gets me pretty hot and carboned to have a pretty kid like you jet all the way up here just to have me disassemble you," he rumbled, sandy vocals rich with a conniving casual edge as he began disconnecting the wires to Prowl's offline thrusters. "I gotta wonder why you'd spend the time here _with me_ when your little Autobot friends need you in that war of theirs. Every time, you jump through all the hula-hoops to have my toys taken off when you'll just need them again next solar-cycle—"

"You said I had to return them," Prowl cut in severely, fists knotting at his sides. The ragged tension radiating from the standing 'bot made the older Cybertronian smile and cock his head. Kid was like a tea-kettle, all riled up and waiting to peg someone in the optic with his lid.

War certainly changed some 'bots; not that Lockdown didn't like what he saw.

"I didn't mean when they're still sparking and smeared with Energon. I just say that to make sure you come back and… pay me a visit, Mr. Blocked Frequency."

His slick overtones of camaraderie—or something vastly more devious—continued to earn him nothing but suspicion and concentrated disregard. Basic body-signals and cues were Lockdown's second language, and he wasn't stupid: Prowl wanted nothing to do with him. Yet. Lockdown pressed at the rigid ninjabot for kicks, making him wobble the slightest bit, then continued nonchalantly as he tested the clean ports on his visitor's back:

"But if I didn't know any better, I'd say you're up here because you want to be. Maybe because you get something out of it: something nice enough that you keep coming back, and I ask myself… what do I have that Prowl wants?"

After pausing a moment, he feigned a breezy surrender to the question—the mere phrasing of which set the kid's mandibular on edge—and shrugged his hulking shoulders.

"Can't answer it. In any case, you can see where I'm havin' a little trouble… processing your _mixed_ _signals_…"

"I come here because I have to. You're my only option for this work." The words came out quickly, knocking into each other. Prowl gathered himself, then added caustically: "You know why."

"Ri-ight. Because you're ashamed of your 'mods, and don't want your Autobuddies to see you in 'em," Lockdown rasped, pausing for a moment to close a black thruster port and send the base attachment shivering into Prowl's open flank. He grinned toothily. "You don't think they'll like my… presents."

"I would hardly call you a gift-giver," Prowl returned sharply.

"Just a loan-sharkticon," Lockdown snickered. With a well-oiled sound from his heavy body, he folded himself by Prowl's braced legs and began to whistle a brassy tune, which he replaced with a worn, jazzy radio-signal plucked from earth's scarred atmosphere. His fingers, orange and black, worked on.

The one feeling that permeated every exchange they suffered was that Lockdown—no matter what happened, no matter what was said nor in what heated tones—was enjoying every cycle of it. It should have been wasted time for the goal-oriented bounty hunter, but here he was, dallying and trading flexible barbs as though they were companions—overestimating their distant bond of convenience. He continued to ignore Prowl's displeasure with as much vigor as Prowl ignored his obvious pleasure: and that kind of dedication had to include an ulterior motive. It was as though the opportunist had something to personally gain from the quiet Autobot, and that made every harmless laugh set the latter on edge. Any kind of respite from the… tension in the Autobot 'base' was welcome, but the 'bot was _indulging_ something, some sense of fantasy, and Prowl knew it. Or perhaps… he didn't believe there was any such thing as harmless, spontaneous laughter anymore. Perhaps he himself was too cold to recognize it.

Perhaps Lockdown's easy-going impudence grated on him because nothing was careless in his world, and to see someone so detached from that starved reality… both disturbed and enticed him.

They stood quietly for a moment or two before Lockdown tuned down the half-music and spoke again, dermaplating warping around the simple tool sitting in his mouth.

"By the way, it's never good to say someone's your only option. Cuts you to the quick—takes all negotiation away."

Prowl couldn't help but turn at his hips, twisting to catch a glimpse of his white-plated, contradictory surgeon.

"Why are you telling me this?" He demanded, smothering a noise of discomfort as Lockdown brusquely snagged his back-struts and forced his face back to the wall. Prowl's acquiescence didn't reach his lips, which curled testily. "Why do you take the time to give me these little… instructions, these ways of life?"

"Because, kid, I like you," the hunter answered, pointedly pausing in his work. The grumble of sincere warmth—like crumbling magma—made Prowl stiffen again as Lockdown finished, tone edging on predatory. "I like you a lot."

"Because I remind you of yourself," Prowl snorted—much less at his personal devaluation than the fact someone could be so narcissistic. Lockdown shook his head.

"Nope. Believe me, I've come to realize that you and me are different—_real_ different—but we still have all the right things in common. Like strength, smarts, speed—a certain sense of refined hubris—"

"I am not like you."

"But I've watched your work down there."

Prowl froze.

"Against those nasty old Decepticons? Yeah. Nice stuff, gotta say—especially in Redford," Lockdown drawled, and the slick appreciation in his vocals made Prowl feel like an oily servo had suddenly squirmed into his dead chest-cavity and _grabbed_.

Lockdown had seen Redford.

The reason he waged his war on the Decepticons alone was not simply because of his aversion to teamwork (which implied there was a united team left to work with: all Prowl had was fragments of 'bots he once knew). It was because he could not risk hurting his fellows: the mods were too powerful, his shame of them too restrictive, and he needed to… feel free to kill. Even after all this time, he hesitated at feeling Optimus' bright blue gaze at his back, halved as it was. Regardless of Prime's own sins, their leader's colors and Homeric profile reminded him, like a cool touch to his face, of a cleaner, nobler life, where he wasn't so eager to harm. So he worked alone, to keep that phantom life in one piece and to function befitting his split-second judgment.

But… Redford was a tragedy. Redford had not been evacuated. The Decepticons fell upon it without warning, so Prowl simply considered himself lucky to have been nearby: but civilians were underfoot, and when he was given an opening to truly wound Blitzwing (for Bulkhead, for belly-laughs and Bumblebee's brittle Spark) he had to take it.

He had to, even if it left a trail of reddish carbon ashes and piteous, smeared human silhouettes on the ravaged concrete.

He missed his target. Blitzwing escaped, but _they_ never felt a thing.

Lockdown, chuckling like an insidious earthquake, left to get another tool, leaving Prowl with a chill tearing through his system. When he padded back to his work area, the bounty hunter took a moment to cup the back of the younger 'bot's head, wedging a commanding digit into his foramen-gap. Prowl twisted with a strained sound, shoulders knocking back into Lockdown's spiked bulk before he froze, visor stretched wide.

"Like I said, we've got all the best things in common," he rasped sunnily, then released him with another shove. Prowl stumbled more than he should have, aspirating haltingly. Lockdown, setting down his many-limbed tools, waited for Prowl to stop twitching and for the panicked internal glug of coolant to dwindle before he cut the power to his noisy EM field—the heavy, possibly-painful work of extracting the chest-plate and thrusters was done--and straightened again, stretching his arms and hovering by the hushed Autobot's back.

"Still, I can't see where a battle-weary _Autobot_ gets off marchin' into a neutral's ship every other solar-cycle, holstering his shuriken and assumin' the position like he trusts me."

Lockdown paused. Prowl tensed as a cold servo clamped down on his shoulder, digits nearly wedged into his neck again. The grip was strong and alarming—conspicuously dominant--but the ninjabot did not honor it with so much as a twitch.

"You trust me, Prowl?

"As far as I can throw you," Prowl managed dispassionately.

"But enough for me to have my servos joint-deep in your substructure. I understand," the bounty hunter said with a laugh. He turned the grip into something useful by wrenching Prowl's freed backstruts into alignment, but the other 'bot did not relax until it was off his neck. Lockdown chuckled again, apparently besotted by the idea. "Primus, I must be lighter than I think…"

With that exchange, their rhythm, harsh and spotty as it was, was back. Prowl found his pistons slowing as the cool space-deep quiet of the detachments stretched onwards. His black plating shifted freely, meeting easily at joints like a fond, clinking kiss—he felt natural again, which was always a relief. Soon, he was stripped of all but his plating-fused katana, which Lockdown formally powered down with a smothering, heavy-looking tool: otherwise, it would have stripped the derma-plating from his servos within a distance of eleven centimeters.

Prowl couldn't survive without his mods, harsh as they were. He was even getting… fond of their neutral brutality, but that was only when they cut deep and shortened his battles. Never normally. He wasn't that kind of 'bot, after all. Violence had purpose, not pleasure.

Of course.

When the bounty hunter released the last snaps and let the exotic mod roll into his waiting servos like a weighty, soft-plated protoform–which was as close to as parental instinct as one would see in the crusty Undecided—Prowl shook himself down and rubbed his carpal joint in relief. Lockdown caught his gaze and smirked, sideways and disarming. Prowl's face locked up, severe mouth pinching shut: the older 'bot's widening grin confirmed that, yes, _anything_ he did was viable entertainment for Lockdown.

Prowl tried to fume, but found himself too weary for it. He set back to kneading his wrist.

"But you don't trust me," Lockdown began again, dredging up their last line of conversation as he walked to the particular (and well-used) shelf that held the ninja's glossy samurai modifications. "That's good, Prowl: I wouldn't want you going soft on me."

"Do you not value trust?" Prowl asked him simply. It had been one of the longest solar-cycles in recent memory. Failed assault, then _Bumblebee_, and now Lockdown… a very, very long solar-cycle. He was too tired to fight the creeping rapport, so for once—just this once—he let it happen. "It is the currency of justice and prosperity."

"Yeah, and how often do those checks bounce?" Lockdown snapped, wrapping each mod in its protective sheeting and strapping them all down for any inter-space turbulence. "Don't think me some grizzled obsolete model going on about lost values, but trust is a loaded gamble. Everyone's a cheat. Even when it doesn't explode in your face, trust, sooner or later, nosedives into the assumption of powerlessness: into a lack of fear for what someone can do."

He turned to face Prowl and approached him steadily, bright red optics trained on the waiting Autobot.

"No matter who you are, I always want you to know that I can hurt you—and how can you trust a 'bot with that on his mind?" Lockdown challenged him. He halted in front of Prowl, expression already busy with some flickering inner machinery: something inflamed by Prowl's visual link and his neutral, if not willing, vocals.

"Do you trust me?" Prowl asked levelly. It counted as the second true question he had ever asked the other Cybertronian, and Lockdown took a moment to savor that solid number. His red optics whirred, jaw jutting to the side.

"I think you're a skilled killer," he said after a dry cycle. "And I value those skills enough to want you."

"In what way?"

Third question. He smirked.

"Any way you'll have me," Lockdown rumbled, craning down to send a warm puff of core-heat flowing across Prowl's exposed shoulders. The ninja twitched at the enveloping sensation, but did not recoil, though the larger 'bot's thick shadow seemed to spread an ominous weight over his chest.

"I'm afraid I… don't understand," he said carefully, straining to sort through the sudden assault of stimuli and further unsettled by the leer cracking across Lockdown's hard face. The bounty hunter drew back slightly, shadow and all, and made a disappointed noise, surveying him lazily.

"Mn. Playin' innocent. I like your sass better." The grin was back, feral at the edges with remembered glee. "Remember that time we first teamed up?"

"It was the only time," Prowl reminded him tersely, internally recoiling from the immature debacle—his own assuming overtones and his _gall _in approaching the bounty hunter in his own ship. The fact that he had… indulged Lockdown with banter. He shook his head. "Lockdown—"

"C'mon. You really don't get it?" The hunter demanded. "I've done all I can do: given you all the mods you wanted and put 'em on to suit. You know I don't give a gearshaft which way this Earth catfight goes, so--spending megacycles on the same slaggin' operations when I could be out taking jobs? I'm seriously sticking my neck out for you, kid, and that's the part of me I love most."

Stalled by the physical proximity and the hard, thick _scent_ of the solid mech, Prowl didn't think to lash out when Lockdown's servo came down on his shoulder again. He twitched his garish digits across Prowl's filament-edged sensory neck-plating, smoothing and stroking at the film of condensation left by the earlier wet heat. Too late, Prowl's servo whipped up to immobilize Lockdown's wrist, tender, wiry insides tensing from the arrested touch, but nothing could wipe the satisfied expression from the hunter's face as he leaned in, nearly pinning Prowl to a nearby rack with a clatter.

"You know how long I've spent circling the quadrant of this organic-infested place, playin' your upgrade-bot, just waiting for you to warm up and olfactorate the opportunity I'm laying in your pretty palms? I dress you up—do I have to take you out, too?"

"Take me…out?" Prowl repeated faintly. The new, nervous tremor in his vocals—along with the minute whizzing of his hidden optics--made Lockdown smile.

"Yeah. Nice and easy."

Fluid as a sated lion, Lockdown seized Prowl's head with the immobilized servo and forced him across his knees, swiftly belting the prone Autobot across the back of his narrow, ridged neck. The metal-on-metal blow rang in the red-lit room, a testament to its feral force.

Prowl lost power with a gust of anguished electric static, body jerking until only his pistons were left clicking, slower and slower. When Lockdown had held him for a full cycle—assured that no 'bot could fake stasis that still and deep—he slid to the floor and arranged Prowl's limp form comfortably against his barrel chest, tweaking his slack buccal plate with a nasty, amused noise.

"Or maybe that's 'take you _down'_. Always get those two confused. It's space, you know: directions are all relative."

Lockdown chuckled at himself and a job well done.

"Ah well. We'll have lots to talk about when you're back online, kid," he promised the handsome, pliant soldier. He stooped to pick Prowl up properly, then hefted him over his spiked shoulder. "Alley-oop."

Good start.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Coming out of stasis was like a slow haul uphill with rusty joints: every scrambled noise or scent became stuck in his lagging system, filling him with a miserable, choking sensation. The 'light' of the reboot dribbled dutifully down from his central processor, and feeling resurfaced in his distant body-parts, bringing nothing but a vague, tired tension. Most of all, his neck ached: Prowl groaned as he turned his buzz-soaked head, then flinched at the clank it made when it hit… something metal. The floor.

But his equilibrium chip, already online through shortcut-reboot programming, was quietly informing him that he was not parallel with the nearest identifiable 'ground' concept. He was at a worrying angle: worrying, because he could not process it while his programming hurried back in bits and pieces. He couldn't even… remember what had happened before. When his optics flashed online, he stared at the geometric pattern of the bounty-ship's red hull for a full, syrupy cycle before thinking to test his limbs.

When he did, he found his arms and legs stretched flat and bolted in place by tight, blue-lined cuffs. Cuffs fused to a worryingly angled operation table in a red ship he'd seen and smelled too many times for comfort. He gasped, blistering panic sparking up his substructure and tazering his sluggish processor to attention. Prowl hardly had time to grasp his specific location or test his restraints again before a dense piece of darkness shifted to his right and swelled toward him. He jerked reflexively, twisting away from it.

"_Tsk-tsk_," came the rumble. "Bad form, Prowl. Very bad form."

Lockdown stepped into the ship's red lights, picking at his bright orange 'mod with his capable left servo.

"That look on your face—you lied to me."

"Wh-what?" Prowl mumbled, fighting to stifle the dizzying sensation that stemmed from his recovering circulation. He swallowed, manhandling his groggy system to rights and blindly pressing upwards at the restraints.

"You _do_ trust me." Lockdown, coarse enjoyment lighting his face as he motioned to Prowl's extremities. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be so surprised to find yourself in cuffs."

Prowl thrashed only briefly, then fell into a shuddering stillness, glaring up at the looming, traitorous mech with venom.

"Perhaps I just expected _better_ of you, Lockdown," he hissed.

"Ooh, that hurts," the bounty hunter moaned. He pressed past the occupied berth and turned to a well-lit table with a callous chuckle; Prowl heard the expert click and slide of his mod-swapping. "At this rate, I'll never get to join the Auto-scouts club. Poor me."

The new piece of him gleaming in the yellow light, Lockdown gave his classic hook a firm spin then snapped it into place.

"Still, I'm disappointed. You let me charm you off-guard."

"So you were lying!" Prowl's sudden rage made him buck, back clanging against the table: beyond that, the motion was useless. His servos clenched in nervous, stinging frustration above his frozen wrists.

"Nope. Not hardly." The bounty hunter turned and approached his operation table, digits wandering soundlessly along the fluid lines of the hook. "I just consider this the… official offer. For a _binding_ contract, you could say."

He found his own jokes very enjoyable, and was never embarrassed to be the only one laughing.

"What do you want from me?" Prowl snarled through his sealed teeth. So very direct: Lockdown shook his head and shot his prisoner a careful look.

"Don't blow a circuit, kid. I ain't gonna hurt you—well, not like _that_."

Prowl made a short, vicious noise as Lockdown reached down to thumb the near-invisible attachment seam of his normal jetpack, servo slipping up the young Autobot's exposed side with attentive relish.

"I've handled your mods so many times I've gotten kinda attached to seein' 'em where they belong. Ripping into you'd be like… wrecking a piece of art," he finished breathily, eyes burning over Prowl's glossy, taut contours, relaxing with a satisfied sound as his finger traced a clean gold detail on the kid's chest armor— and perhaps it was only natural.

Perhaps Lockdown had guarded and nurtured a concept of art before many others on Cybertron: he learned to recognize refinement as it passed underneath his mauled servos, and the beauty in form of Cybertronians—varied, crystalline, symmetrical Cybertronians--alongside the compact pieces he ripped from their numb bodies. He had an eye for beauty. Any other body-part he needed—an arm for strength, an engine for speed-- he took and assimilated into his hideous rotating menagerie of limbs. He was a toothy creature of exotic spare parts, and prideful as a lion, but didn't that sensitize him to the exquisiteness in both perfect form and function?

Then again, maybe he'd simply never found a pretty 'bot that he _liked_ as much as this one.

Lockdown broke his roaming touches with a sociable pat to Prowl's abdomen and took a step away.

"No, I just want you nice and still. Funny, how jamming motor relays makes your audio sharpen, huh?" Prowl's only response, optics fixed apprehensively on the carnal curve of the hunter's favorite mod, was an evasive snort. "All of this is a demonstration: help you realize the importance of the situation and all. Didn't want you storming out mid-proposal. This is just easier… both on the nervous circuitry and the optics."

While the other physical offenses set him on edge, he was yet too bewildered to entertain anything but fear. Now, Prowl finally felt a rousing spark of anger as Lockdown pointedly looked him over: the expression on the other 'bot's face was an uncomfortable mix between greed and cunning. Prowl bared his teeth, plates subtly straining inward to cover him in this… exposure.

"Make your point."

Lockdown shrugged, massive arms folding across his front.

"This is it, kid. I'm leaving."

The ship was silent for a moment, then it—Lockdown's profession and his constant need for relocation--clicked for the battered Autobot.

"This is your way of saying _goodbye_?" Prowl demanded, beyond aghast.

"Nope. This is my way of making sure we never have to say that nasty word," the bounty hunter corrected him. He approached the table with an anticipatory air, leering straight into Prowl's blank visor. "Y'see, I'm leaving this dry sector. Packing up shop, goin' to higher ground. You know what that means? No more mod-daddy."

It made sense now.

Prowl stared up into Lockdown's crude face, uncertainty competing with dry, aching fear: Lockdown was leaving. His modifications—he would lose them. He would have to fight without them, which made survival a non-option. Either that, or by some freak chance Lockdown would attach them one final time and laugh as he walked into the world with the permanent, detailed beautiful scars of his future survival all over his body—

"But I know that'll leave you in a tight spot, what with your Con-vendetta and all, so I got an offer for you."

Prowl looked at him apprehensively. Lockdown nodded.

"Come with me."

"What?" Prowl whispered.

"Remember when I said you'd make a good bounty hunter? I still hold to that, and I'm takin' applications for… a partner." He tried the word out with gusto, then shrugged. "What can I say? It gets lonely in this tin can, and I do _love_ our conversations."

Stunned, Prowl grappled with a far-back memory, only half-listening to the bounty hunter. He remembered, in bits and shards, that first bursting encounter with Lockdown—the hulking Undecided had impressed him, beguiled him and he felt the superior tingle of having effected the same emotions, surely. There bloomed a mutual grasping, a mutual interest—

"_I've been thinkin'. You and I are kinda… kindred spirits. Like I said, you've got a gift—"_

--rife with possibility but off limits for his reserved Spark—

"_--so how about you ditchin' those losers and going into business with me?"_

It was the wrong time.

"_Playing with your toys may have been fun for a while_"—

The happiest wrong time: he would never leave Earth for that.

"_Do not contact me again_."

"_Aww. Now don't take it like that."_

He hadn't thought twice about the actual weight of the offer from a mature mech like Lockdown: he'd only felt some vague, nervous satisfaction as he blocked the bounty hunter's frequency after the first few (suggestive) calls, never thinking that Lockdown was decidedly _plying_ him from millions of dark space miles away. The mech did not listen; did not give up.

Now, he was at it again. He was asking Prowl to come with him: to live and fight with him. To abandon his tortured existence on Earth and escape into the absolved, neutral silence of deep space.

"I've heard this before," Prowl muttered darkly.

"Then one more time can't hurt, because you ain't jumpin' for joy yet. I said—"

The ninja shook his head haltingly, grasping for something. Anything.

"No. I couldn't… abide such lawlessness."

Lockdown made a genuinely amused noise.

"Laws? The universe has no laws. The flow of society all rides on who has what, and who else wants it—and how much they're willin' to pay to get it. That's where we come in." Prowl flinched as Lockdown's arm slid beside his head, sharp face following. His oral-vapor, masculine and scented, warmed his cheek. "I'm no server-reader, Prowl, but I know what you want. Can see you clawin' for it a mile away. You want power; stability. I have it."

He drew back and began to circle the table: it was a short, indolent diversion. Prowl's processor nearly stalled when the table flattened with a smooth noise, and Lockdown's knee came down on the sturdy construction and heaved the rest of him up. His operational servo nearly brushed the outside of Prowl's spread leg; the ninja twisted futilely in his restraints. Lockdown snickered, pressing on:

"You want your neck in one piece, and Energon on tap. You want a _house life_. You want 'Honey, I'm home—'"

"Your price is too high," Prowl grit out, feeling the stasis-berth shake under Lockdown's unimaginable weight. The older 'bot's face was slack with feigned surprise as he slowly began to eclipse the supine mech, the shadow of his spiked shoulders devouring Prowl's thin hips.

"You can't talk price, kid. You got no pull. I was permanently 'on call' the past four stellar-cycles; I forked over top-scale customized mods without a word about money or returns. You think I did all that for kicks? And after you slaggin' _trashed_ the first ones I gave you."

He made a scathing noise, because Prowl never _had_ thought about it: he'd simply reached and grabbed for any shard of safety.

"You're in _debt_. I've kept you online all this time with my toys, so, as far as I'm concerned, anything you have is legally mine. Anything."

His knees were entrenched between Prowl's thighs, hook slung bracingly over the head of the berth. This was beyond an advance: this was the cumulative assault, and the meaning of his earlier words morphed into an overlooked warning sign. The Autobot sucked in a sharp breath and bit down as Lockdown's dark servo rubbed up the length of his abdomen and over his chestplate, wandered indolently around the base of his thin wing and finally—horribly—grasped his hot neck again.

"That idea make you nervous?" He rasped softly, leaning forward to touch his cheek to Prowl's temple, vocals rumbling in the ninja's auditory units.

He should have protested, but he was both a creature of control and a realist.

Not only was it too late for such elementary signals of displeasure, every signal told him such a thing would not help his argument in the slightest: still his logic drive churned on, its chilly numbers mocking his inflamed, bedraggled state. He would have to nullify Lockdown's line of reasoning before he could move to end the physical (he refused to say sexual) half of it. The two were connected, after all. Surely they were… connected, and hopefully dependent, and, though entirely immobilized on a stasis-berth, at least he had a plan.

Whether or not he was unwillingly, instinctively attracted to the older Cybertronian—if not his aggravating personality then his dense body and his aloof _ways_--was a matter he didn't want to figure into the odds of his escape.

"I can't leave them."

Lockdown shifted over his slender body; Prowl relaxed a fraction as the hunter's face withdrew from the delicate plating of his neck.

"Who, now?" He asked, already brimming with the slow satisfaction of a red-eyed cat.

"My team—" Prowl began forcedly. "My companions, they—"

"Were a lost cause from the beginning. Earth is gone, and you know it. I've been on Megatron's call-list for eons, and I'm telling you: he'll win. 'Con's as tenacious as a wire-beetle, with more cash than anyone has a right to have. That's as knock-out a recipe for success as you'll ever find, kid. Practically unstoppable."

It killed him to have his war put into such words. With it, Bulkhead simply… disappeared, sapped of all meaning. All love and sacrifice. Prowl closed his optics, feeling a dark tide pushing at his resolve.

"But hey—who said you wanted to be dumped in this Allspark-forsaken sector in the first place, little space-bridge techie? It got you one thing: me. A way out."

Hard logic—logic tired of holding out against sentimentality—told him to listen, but Prowl knew he had received many things from Earth: he found duck ponds, clear skies and Sari. He found quiet roads and challenges. He found a beautiful _world_—and, until a few years ago, he had a family.

He made a stricken noise when Lockdown pinched his cheek, dragged back to the visual world to face the craggy 'bot and his intent stare.

"You're lucky," Lockdown told him seriously. "Most everyone else gets from that kind of screw-up is pure ache."

"I have that aplenty," Prowl said tonelessly.

"Then leave it. Once you're settled in, I'll take you anywhere you want. I respect what you can do. You respect me, and we've got a deal."

"You know nothing of loyalty," Prowl spat. "You would betray us—me--in a moment."

"Your friends? No. Not unless the money's really, really good," Lockdown drawled winningly, now occupied with caressing the crest of Prowl's forearms. The ninja quivered, own servos clenching in frustration, but managed to save one cold thought:

"And if Megatron wanted me?"

That stopped him. The bounty hunter took his servo away and faced Prowl directly, nose-to-nose.

"I don't sell anything but my skills, Prowl. Once somethin's mine, it stays mine," Lockdown assured him wryly. The assertion of ownership already burning, Prowl choked as something cold poked his chest, then winced as the hook rattled back and forth over his enameled Autobot sigil. "But you won't have a thing to worry about once you peel that silly bumper sticker off your plate. He'll have no reason to want you, kid. You'll be home-free with me."

Take off his crest?

It seemed too easy: the programming would still be there, even if his chestplate was bare. He should have known Lockdown would require it, but with that act, he would… forsake his Autobot allegiance. He would sink into the unregistered chasm and live in aloof greys, abandoning his cause, his faction, his world. Abandon implied leaving something behind in his mad dash for safety: his friends. His _friends_.

Bumblebee. Sari. Optimus, Ratchet. They would still fight. They would still... die.

He and Lockdown were—they would be bounty hunters. Commissioned killers, mercenaries. Even if they were galaxies away, Megatron could appoint them to hunt down any one of Prowl's team and turn them into the Decepticons—or murder them on sight. And... for a large enough fee, Lockdown would span those galaxies to do it.

Lockdown would _still_ do it, even with Prowl at his side.

But that was a far-away nightmare, hard to keep in his sparking processor with Lockdown's dense weight right above him, pushing it out of him. Chasing it away. Part of him wanted to say that Lockdown would never do such a thing, but even Prowl recognized that as insanity. Other than that, his rationale was reduced to an unsteady hiccup of code underneath the suffocating, rousing anxiety the bounty hunter was wreaking in him by mere proximity.

Most of all, alone and supine with this tolerated enemy and known 'Con-sympathizer, he was miraculously unafraid: which should have terrified him.

"That's it. Relax," Lockdown hissed, vocals so deep they vibrated through his chassis. "I'll take care of you better than that Prime ever did."

The fact that nothing made sense anymore gave him leave to let his chin fall back as Lockdown's electric field pressed into his, sending a fleshy tingle dripping down his backstruts. The solid dark energy _felt_ like the mech, clenching and snapping dominantly as it fused with his own quiet electric discharge. Prowl's hips twitched as they received the cumulative shock, but locked in place above the table as Lockdown dipped forward to take his wiry throat, oil and Energon rushing underneath the plating where the scarred lips pushed and kissed.

As Autobots went, Prowl was young. Quite young. Surely, he had never experienced ecstasy before, but the fact was, he had never wanted to touch Lockdown. While he was attracted to the mech in a bare, desperate way, the idea of _instigating_ anything with the mismatched 'bot was never in his mind, displeasing to his dignity and his reserve and everything that was him. But _being_ touched—handled, stroked and pressed at in exquisite silky sensory crevices--opened an innate void as eager as it was naive.

All of it made him want Lockdown. Badly, and _personally_: enough to disregard his status as a hostage, and enough to savor the outlandish feel of Lockdown's piecemeal body scraping across his plates with every squirm. Attractive. Stimulating. Prowl didn't waste precious capacity disbelieving himself and his new view of Lockdown: after all, the hunter wasn't _talking_ anymore, and that simple fact did wonders to bring his personal assets into a favorable light.

Vibrating with raw want quickly became unbearable with his body held at four corners. Prowl was unable to do more than twitch or aspirate as Lockdown persuaded him, _negotiated_ his body and his willingness with invasive, sure touches and a teasing magnetic pulse somewhere at his undercarriage—courtesy of some underhanded mod, certainly. The bounty hunter was prepared. He had wanted this from the beginning, but Prowl didn't care about motives anymore, past or present. Lust was… unfamiliar to him, but he caught on quickly. The Autobot's mouth parted in a silent moan when Lockdown's face slipped flush against the side of his head, delicately-plated white lips scuffing against his black auditory guards. He spoke, ginger and slow.

"You haven't called your Autobot friends yet."

The words hit him in the gut, snatching him from shuddering peach-tinted rapture.

Prowl's optics snapped online: before he could process it, he'd jerked against his restraints, body suddenly cold as ice and reality combined, and turned his head away—_away_. The daze didn't last long. He made the motion to alarm-call with an organized, panicked flick of his internals, but only a flat fizzle answered him, termination coupled with a dead beep. No connection.

Lockdown laughed deep inside his chest: he'd taken care of that megacycles ago.

"Didn't say you could, kid. Was just making an observation," he rumbled neatly. "Still, I'd say that's the… second time today you've underestimated me. Honestly, you could be in a world of trouble like this, all stretched out and cuffed up: slacking on your own survival is a bad habit if you want to live with me."

Prowl made a feeble, anguished noise, clenching his hands and twisting. The cold shock had damaged him, and cut off any ridiculous, unbecoming… feelings. His insides felt like they had been seared dry, misery clotting at the edges of his tubing. Used, and once again a hostage: Lockdown's upper hand, before a thrilling respite, now became a sneering weight on the back of his neck. Still, Lockdown looked him over with a pleased air, good servo rubbing surely at Prowl's now-chilly shoulder.

"Then again, maybe you just don't want your buddies to see you like this," Lockdown mused. "They don't like me."

"They shouldn't," Prowl murmured.

"You do."

Prowl turned his head to the side, exhaustion and anxiety thickening his system into dead, trembling weight. He was utterly jammed from Lockdown's conniving touches: his circuits fired aimlessly, singed and confused. Prowl swallowed and slowly recoiled as Lockdown began touching his face, mind lingering only on the cold cuffs on his wrists and the colder ship enveloping them both. The bounty hunter pressed at Prowl's cheek, then grabbed his chin (in that gritty way that was utterly him, tense and dark but still even-handed) and stared unflinchingly into his wincing optics.

"We'll split it. Everything: fifty-fifty."

It was the same bit as before, with different wording. More detail. More… feeling. He should have ignored it, but third time was the charm. Prowl actually thought about it.

Silent and still, he thought about what having a partner would mean for the bounty hunter. A true partner, both in slow, ship-confined stellar-cycles and quick Energon-soaked rushes: someone to split everything fifty-fifty with. Fifty-fifty was the key. For Lockdown—who truly needed no partner to get the job done and lived his life by every handful of money—it was monumental. It was a commitment, an unorthodox promise that rivaled a standard Cybertronian bonding in Lockdown's gritty opportunist life. Bondmates.

Prowl was repulsed at the very idea, but… there would be advantages. Safety. Health. Stability. Other… things: metallic pleasures. If he went with Lockdown, he knew life would be grim—Prowl would live without trust and without friends with an Undecided for whom he would constantly have to earn his keep, who could put him offline in a moment if bored and probably have an easy job of it _because Prowl was subject to that flaw of trust_—but the offer alone startled him into staticky silence.

"Money means nothing to me," he whispered finally.

"Sure I can find something that does," Lockdown reasoned warmly. "We got the whole universe to search, after all."

He pressed onwards when Prowl made no move to speak, watching the other's blank visor carefully.

"Seeing new planets, riding in style. Taking down bad-bots along the way."

"Taking down whoever has the richest enemies!" Prowl countered.

"Okay, so that was a stretch. Plug me," the bounty hunter snorted good-naturedly. "I'm just tryin' to appeal to that silly sense of honor you're hung up on."

Hung up on, indeed.

Prowl shook his head, pistons slowing under the weight of it all: everything he had given up, and everything he had kept through explosions and scars. Everything he had… it was heavy and damaged, bleeding him by both sheer weight and hateful nature. He couldn't continue this way, eking out an existence on Earth and killing innocents in his greater war. It was a dead end, and he seemed the only one intelligent or capable enough to free himself from the spiral. Perhaps it was time for him to… think of himself.

He could function in compartmentalized, closed tasks: missions without relevance or wrenching loyalties. He would thrive. He had the skills and the calm. He would dominate. Take back some of his control, some of his world, through these missions and these straight-forward rewards. Focus on pleasing Lockdown and… delivering whoever needed to be delivered. As long as he didn't ask why, it would be fine.

Wouldn't it?

Quietly, he bowed to the moral-nullifying power of Lockdown's primitive, careless rhetoric. In the syrupy mire of Prowl's self-doubt, Lockdown looked him in the face and smiled like he had never seen a 'bot with so much potential. He smiled like he had someplace to take Prowl. A plan for him.

Prowl sparked to see someone else with a plan.

"Come with me, kid. I mean it. You impress the tar outta me, and I want you."

The earlier moral upset did not matter in the slightest: the rough, sincere look on Lockdown's face sealed something. Too soon Prowl was pulled under by his own body, by the stimulation programs already fully underway. Grabbing his face, Lockdown kissed him once, nearly denting his tender dermaplating with the feral push of it. Prowl cried out; Lockdown stifled it.

He had no power: while nervous pleasure still made him jerk and rattle, the cuffs had become a blessing. True, he didn't trust Lockdown, but with his hellish world exploding around him, he needed to be controlled. Have his energies funneled and directed. Be _kept_.

Lockdown's scarred digits scraped along the edges nearest his Spark chamber—now lit with a misty, anxious light—only to press so firmly that he shuddered, feeling the hot material nearly warp. He had never—this was new, terrifyingly unconventional to his programming—

Switching grips, Lockdown wrenched him up off the bench to grab at the sensor-riddled small of his back and crush himself against Prowl's vibrating pelvic-plating, biting into his collar-wires as he did so. Prowl thrashed with stinging pleasure, head slamming into the table. Again and again, Lockdown bore down on him; hard pain and zinging arousal competed for his fragmented attention.

Prowl was helpless, yes, but there was someone in control. So different from chaos, from fear. Optimus wasn't a friend anymore, wasn't a protector—_Optimus Prime_--a clean kind of lust if there was such a thing—a craving for dense, trim bodies and thick hands that he never could explain--

Prowl knew that he was gasping and shaking. He knew that, if let free, he would be twined around the older Cybertronian, pressing and gasping and biting in a panic, wanting some _piece of him_ to internalize. Lockdown, crushed forehead-to-heel with the smaller, supine Autobot, electric fields snapping together wherever dark metals met, took a cycle to enjoy arrogant Prowl's complete surrender.

"You want that… Spark-to-Spark now, kid?" He hissed, stroking the hair-thin seam lines on the younger 'bot's chest-plate. Prowl arched against him, moaning as Lockdown prized the cover up a nanometer with the exquisite, cold tip of his hook.

"Please," he whispered, serene vocals shorting out. The _center_ of him pulsed outward toward the space air and Lockdown.

Lockdown rumbled in pleasure, but let the chamber fall shut again with a small snap. Prowl groaned, body ablaze with caged suffering, trying to keep his noises small and bitten-on. He was overwhelmed, almost _overloaded_. He couldn't do more than one thing: he couldn't hate the airless pleasure throbbing from his spark chamber and react to the bounty hunter's descending touches at the same time. The result was a needy, fickle struggle that only made Lockdown laugh, even as he finished digging his teeth into an elaborate, sweet wire-bundle on the inside of Prowl's pale thigh. He reared up again, snickering into the smaller mech's anguished face.

"C'mon, ninjabot, this is supposed to be fun. Let me know you're still awake."

Reaching down to the cusp of his pelvic plating, Lockdown savagely slashed his hook up Prowl's side, creating a furious line of hot blue sparks. Prowl cried out in unexpected pain, then again, rougher and louder, as the second ghost wave hit his snapping circuitry.

Unlike the pleasure, the pain made sense.

It made sense—memory core sense--because it cut straight through the patched gash Blackarachnia had carved into his side the day after Bulkhead died. He was grieving: his guard was down, and she didn't miss her chance to gut him. His exostructure may have been knitted over by the magnetizer, black alloy coaxed around the wound, but the 'Con had succeeded in severing a handful of very vital mechanisms and the wiring always felt split. Phantom pain. It stemmed from her organic acid-venom, which had injected a permanent slow-scale corrosive into his casings.

Ratchet had a Pit of a time getting the bulk of the venom out of his system. He crashed so fast—it got into his coolant circulation system, the chemical highway of an Autobot's substructure, and soon he was _condensating_ venom but hot as a fusion-chamber—that Optimus thought he would lose two soldiers in one week.

He didn't, but he still lost part of himself with Bulkhead and the knowledge that none of them was safe anymore. None. Prowl spent his first rebooted megacycle wrapped his leader's thick arms, weak as a protoform, listening to Optimus grieve.

Then they lost Bee to silence.

Snapping back, Prowl gasped. He tensed, then buckled, the sting resurfacing in his side again as he frantically tried to twist free of Lockdown's impossibly heavy, crackling body.

"Wait, no—_stop_--"

"Aw, don't take it like that. Nothin' a little wax won't fix," he promised seductively, servo creeping down to toy with the wire-cluster of earlier, flicking and clenching. Prowl hissed, struggling to dislodge his busy grip.

"Lockdown—_Lockdown_."

The bounty hunter's servo froze, stilled by the sudden fury in Prowl's vocals. Something, apparently, had gone wrong. His own body still roared and sparked everyplace he touched the kid—intensified by the invigorating little scratch--but he still pushed up to glare guardedly at the condensation-drenched Autobot, Spark pulsing hard in his chassis.

"Yeah?" He asked, turning the single syllable into a toothy challenge.

Prowl looked at him and slowly shook his head.

"Cease. I don't… want this."

Prowl had a problem with both trust and good expectations. Whether he actually expected to be released was debatable, but Lockdown's only response was a delayed, ugly chuckle.

"The table doesn't care." He patted Prowl's wrist-cuff. "Why would I bother with restraints if I wanted to drown in semantics and consent? Sparks, your wires are crossed if you think I'm a good guy. I'm accomplished, not _good_."

The laugh dripped into something dark and indulgent. Prowl seemed to spasm in condensed panic, clenching his optics shut and curling ever so slightly. Lockdown went on, stroking Prowl's matte crevices at leisure.

"Y'know, ever since that first time I fitted you, I've always wanted to engage you. Maybe… yeah, Pit: just like this. I may not be the youngest 'bot around, but all those cycles have taught me what I like."

Prowl was motionless, refusing both the touch and the accompanying words and quivering from the onslaught of coarseness. Perfectly still, save for an itchy subsonic hum.

"You're a sleek model. Small," he purred, sitting back on his haunches. "I like that too."

Two clicks, too small to be heard, popped from the foot of the table. Lockdown's servo sat firmly on his condensation-glossy chest-plate, nearly pressing. After a moment, Prowl exhaled haltingly and looked up at Lockdown with a misty, unfocused expression.

"You have a certain… eclectic charm about your exostructure as well," the Autobot murmured, a flutter of heat in his vocals. Lockdown glared at the pliant change, suspicious, then slowly warmed to the half-smile on Prowl's long, coy face.

"Well, aren't you steamy," the bounty hunter chuckled slowly, then tapped Prowl's head. His good mood resurfaced, shaking off the wet interruption. "You're messing with me."

Prowl's soft features crystallized, tightening into a hard, aggressive grimace.

"Wrong," he hissed. "I'm distracting you."

Circuit-su still took cycles and cycles of concentration, but stasis cuffs were often weakened by the unstable currents that stemmed from energy-field-fusion. It confused them, bloated their circuits. Just a few electro-clairvoyant taps and they broke like eggs: Lockdown had obviously never tried being forcibly intimate with a circuit-su artist on a stasis-berth. That proved he still had many things to learn, and lessons like this came hard.

Prowl freed his feet from the ankle-cuffs and whipped his legs to his chest. Bellowing, he rocked up onto his shoulder-plates and slammed out and up at Lockdown's jaw with the blade of both heels. He felt the complex crunch down to his knee-joints as Lockdown's white face snapped back and something in his thick throat _broke_, crumpling the bounty hunter's furious roar.

Lockdown crashed off the table, a gush of tortured static pouring out of him: when he hit the floor and rolled to a stop, Prowl twisted expertly and struck his leg on the edge of the berth. His right shuriken clicked as it activated, spinning out and plunging two of its three claws wire-deep into Lockdown's arm. Another sizzling cry followed, ringing through the shadowed workshop.

Prowl had nanoclicks to escape. The remaining cuffs sucked up three of them: when they popped open, he vaulted from the berth, jets flaring at his back. The sputtering power took him three strides further than he had hoped, but Lockdown was quicker than he'd feared. Prowl snarled as he pitched forward, clanging onto the floor in a processor-jarring crash, Lockdown's iron hand clenched around his left wheel. He clawed forward, fighting not to shout as pins warped and the wheel's fragile frame shook, and kicking out at the bounty hunter blindly with his other foot.

Unfortunately, pain was motivation for Lockdown.

With a mangled sound of rage and determination, Lockdown scaled his prone body and wrenched him to his feet, punching him across the face. Sparks, hard and scented like burning wire, bloomed in Prowl's sensors as his body went limp again for a split nanoclick. Lockdown slammed him down onto the berth again, this time lowering red-charged bars from the top of the table and strapping them across Prowl's flaccid pinned arms.

Lockdown secured them and staggered back, aspirating roughly, then collapsed in the shadow of the nearest mod-shelf.

By the time Prowl had control of his body again, his mind had already torn through all of his options. He lay on the berth, aspirating just as heavily as Lockdown—more through trauma than anything: they had no need for air but the _pulse_ and choke of their various frantic systems made them want to exert it in some way—and attempting to keep his body still. Focus. Focus.

Lockdown would come crashing down from the red ceiling and murder him.

Focus.

Finally, after a long, cold silence and stillness, Lockdown spoke. From the lagging, hissing gurgle soaking his voice, it was clear what had broken in his throat: Prowl was betting on his vocal processor or his inductive tubing.

"Haven't seen that nasty little trick in along time," he rasped.

"What—_deceit_? Please," Prowl snapped, vocals quavering as his focus shattered: he arched and kicked against the table.

The move was suicide. _Suicide_. If he had gotten away, Lockdown might have left him alone: whether through fear or frustration, he wouldn't have bothered to come back for him, knowing him to be too much trouble. But now, he was dead. It would be easier to kill him than to let him go. Prowl was offline.

He couldn't get a visual lock on Lockdown. Prowl registered a crackling whirr: perhaps the bounty-hunter shook his head.

"No. Circuit-s… _slag_."

Lockdown cursed gutturally. The busy rustle of him attending to something made Prowl test his restraints again, out of pure panic. Nothing worked. These were fool-proof, and fool he was.

Something fell to the ship's floor with a cold clatter. His shuriken.

With a few pained sounds, Lockdown rose into Prowl's field of vision. It was both a relief and a new source of trepidation: he knew where his enemy was, but now Prowl could see the oil and raw, agonizing Energon pulsing from the serrated gash in Lockdown's arm. It was yet another reason he would be offline in cycles, but, right above the scorched, crumpled patch of his white throat, there lay… a cockeyed, over-stretched smirk. Prowl choked.

"I was right. Hell if I want to make an enemy out of you, kid," he sighed thickly. He paused, grunting out something that may have been a chuckle. "Guess this means we'll take it slow."

Lockdown started toward him, hook-arm hanging heavily at his side. Prowl jerked in condensed terror, starting to buck and kick as the bounty hunter closed in. There was a short scuffle: clicks later, Lockdown had him pinned at the middle with his forearm and, grinning past Prowl's knee wedged defensively in his gut, he whispered in the other 'bot's face:

"Hey—you already got one over on me. I'm down. If I let you go, promise you won't beat me up?"

In his dark, garbled tone was the implication it would be the last thing he'd do.

Prowl searched the Undecided's tribal-marked face for something and apparently found it--or he could see no other option. He nodded, stiff and small. Lockdown drew in a thick breath, reached up with his good arm and powered down the restraints, keeping his optics locked steadily on Prowl. When he backed up into the shadows again, Prowl slid off the table, sure to remain facing his former-modifier. But as the cycles dribbled by and Lockdown did not charge him, or snatch a hidden canon to blast him from existence, the Autobot straightened and emerged from behind his stasis-berth, face wounded with suspicious confusion.

Lockdown shrugged.

"I have honor. It's just… fickle."

And inexpensive, if anyone was looking to purchase it.

Regardless of conduct, the bounty hunter had not fried his processor. Lockdown knew he couldn't scare the kid into staying with him: that would be a modified hostage situation, and give a Pit of a bad start. Prowl would make trouble from then on and probably try to escape-- or sabotage Creator-knew-what. Best to let him go before he got so angry he scorched his circuits.

No, beyond a bit of fun… he didn't want to hurt the kid. Prowl hadn't made him angry. Or… angry enough, he corrected himself wryly, fingers skirting over the new wounds. Slag, he'd have to contact Swindle for a new vocal-processor. He could feel this one throwing sparks straight down into his compressor. No, he wasn't… _angry_.

But it was very questionable what _would_ make him angry with this pretty, vicious little Autobot. The end of his patience kept dancing out of reach, no matter what Prowl did. Somewhere within him, he still found the lunacy to be impressed at the kid's sparkplugs—or his technique, or his tenacity. _Somewhere_ inside, past his scorched vocals and the slow-clotting gash in his arm, he was even more excited to be attacked by the punk.

The word 'promising' came to mind. Spare parts came in plenty, but potential had an expiration date.

Frag, he was stupid.

"Who knows? Maybe you've brought out the best in me, ninja," Lockdown muttered, vocals gurgling laboriously.

Prowl snorted: his own patience had ended the moment he rebooted. He pushed past the table and walked away. He kept walking: he intended to walk off without a word, leaving the quiet tin can ship and his mods and his survival with Lockdown.

Lockdown could've done something about it: the bounty hunter could have just given him the mods. There were a lot of small things he could've done to help keep the kid alive, and all of them were generally easy and didn't require a whole lot of trust—something Prowl was distinctly short on at the moment. Yes, he could've.

Both insanity and tact considered, he still didn't know where he got off asking the fuming Autobot if he'd still like to be his partner.

Rationale flies out the airlock when hopes get high, and what happened before was still good. Very good, and _possible_. Lockdown was solidly wounded, but still earnestly high on the sex, his Spark throbbing heartily. His pretentious nature had carried him thus far: it carried him still when he raised his arm into Prowl's straight path. The small, dense ninja was forced to stop and looked up at him with loathing. Lockdown's dark servo hovered close--tenderly close—to the subtle curve of the ninja's black waist, but when his fingers twitched out to brush it, Prowl stepped back, eyeing him coldly.

Lockdown grinned as best as he could with the taste of smoke, carbon and trickling coolant in his seared mouth.

"C'mon, kid. My final offer: Yes or no?"

Prowl's shock was momentary, curtailed by his quiet rage.

"Never," he answered.

"That ain't an option." Lockdown's optics gleamed threateningly. He had given the kid a polite way out, but he insisted upon exerting his petty little refusal to another level. That one little word made an end to his patience seem… possible. Probable. He grit his teeth. "Try again, Prowl."

Going with Lockdown would mean the death of himself as Prowl knew it.

It would mean cowardice. It would mean abandoning his friends and teammates—friends who had lost just as much as himself, who trusted him to keep going—to fight a war with the truest purpose of all. Freedom. Safety. It was a war in which there were many losses: many losses sustained, many losses to come, but he himself would rather be lost to Megatron's hooked servos than a selfish whim.

He was Prowl, and, whether or not he fought alongside them, he still had a team. No, he didn't fight with them, but he fought _for_ them, every second of every day: he still had a family, and he would continue to fight until they were all either free or offline.

He would not run.

"_I will never join you_."

Their mutual glare intensified, but it took a few cycles for the words to sink in. Never in so many words had Lockdown been refused for something he wanted so much-- and couldn't _take_.

He stepped back, servo clenching at his thick thigh, then curling into a fist. Prowl watched him charily, but when he made to move away—toward the door or simply _away_--Lockdown's hook fastened at the top of his jetpack and that balled-up servo slammed into his gut so hard that Prowl nearly fell to his knees. He didn't have time to react: twice more Lockdown punched him, low and sharp, knocking him into a mod-shelf. Prowl's visual field swam, aching systems fizzling with pain.

Lockdown jerked away and took a minute to regulate. Then he shook his head.

"Sorry about that. You… disappointed me," he muttered, as though it was a treachery—both from Prowl and himself. He hadn't allowed himself to have expectations for a very, very long time.

Prowl leaned on the shelf, choking.

"Guess that's been a long time in coming," he said to himself.

When he looked up, the ninjabot finished wiping a trickle of Energon from his chin, visor thinned.

"From the beginning, bounty hunter," he rasped.

Prowl turned and half-limped out of Lockdown's workshop, naked and bruised but restored of purpose: justice, peace and family on a planet worth saving.

He had a war to win.

-.-.-.-.-

Quiet places still existed in Michigan.

Prowl sat attentively beneath one of the many trees located near his small pond, absorbing every current of organic activity with his peaked sensors. Air flow, bringing scent and pressure. Ground vibrations, betraying dense-hoofed animals. Water, rippling with life. He listened to the rustle of waxy, fresh leaves and the sounds of birds.

_Birds_. He smiled. He was rather fond of birds.

He would have crossed his legs to assume the Lotus position, but a raw wire, poking angrily from a wound, kept sparking whenever brushed, and he thought it best to leave it untouched. That, and he couldn't physically move his right leg. Blitzwing had crushed it after Prowl had plummeted from an unwise and farfetched jump (taken before he realized he no longer had thrusters) and barely missed out on killing him altogether. He had Optimus (and a very aerodynamic dumpster) to thank for his life, but the repairs to his dead limb were taking time: meanwhile, he made use of his time at their base for other tasks.

He was taking over for Sari.

He was not adept at it yet—Sari was the expert, though her own skills had become brittle with worry and anger—but he was learning the art of 'knitting' people together. With outspoken half-jokes and propositions, Prowl was shoving himself into his estranged family and _reaching_ for each of their servos, trying to drag them together again so that they could remember core-warmth. Purpose, motivation, support, love. Most were too perturbed to bother with him at first, even Sari. Surprisingly, Ratchet was the first to respond: though not the intended response, the sound of his raw guffaw stilled the entire base and spooked Bumblebee, who gave a characteristic jump. It was an old, fondly remembered jump: the sheepish smile that usually followed was a goal for next time.

He could see them changing already, thrilling under this tiny bit of freely given consideration, regardless of the war raging outside. Perhaps they would recover, perhaps they wouldn't, but Prowl was never again to assume that their happiness was out of his control.

Prowl slipped into an open meditation after a concentrated attempt at stillness. A subsonic hum soothed any system snarls he had, straightening him out on an internal-rhythmic level as he prepared himself for a possible confrontation. Nature's alarm system was a wondrous thing: he heard the bushes rustle earlier and he had felt the 'bots footsteps far before that, figuring the weight and density from the resulting vibrations, so he was well briefed on the oncoming threat.

By the time Lockdown crept up behind him, servo inches from his shoulderplate, Prowl's remaining shuriken was already out and wedged against the tender connective wirings in the bounty hunter's ankle-joint, pressing warningly.

Lockdown stayed silent and still for a moment in respect for the pinch of the weapon, then drew his servo away.

"Nice," his enemy rumbled. His vocals were intact and lushly synchronized. Fixed.

"I felt your ship over the water," Prowl murmured.

"There goes my attempt at stealth."

"Your last goodbye was sufficient," Prowl said coldly, twisting the shuriken a fraction until it was flush against a vital wire or three. "If you take one more step, I will do my personal best to kill you, then I will call someone to finish the job."

"Easy, little ninjabot. I come bearin' gifts."

If he was trying to wheedle the Autobot into something resembling forgiveness, Lockdown was denser than Prowl had ever thought.

"Everything you _give_ has a hidden price."

Lockdown shook his head. Prowl could feel him delicately shifting his weight—mere leanings, so the shuriken did not nick anything—and tensed at a sudden, complicated clanking behind his back.

"Not these. These are one hundred percent, bone fide freebies," Lockdown grunted. "Take a look."

An open cloth bag slammed down in front of Prowl, jerking to the side and abruptly vomiting a glossy array of black and gold metallics onto the green grass. At first, the collection of blue-tinged weapons and sensual, exotic plating made no sense, then Prowl saw the delicately tapered golden horns jutting from the helmet. _His_ helmet.

His mods.

For a moment, it was beyond his ability to believe. No, they were certainly not 'free': Prowl had paid his price for them… horizontally, mechanically and emotionally, but the gesture still surprised him. Almost unconsciously, Prowl flicked his weapon away from Lockdown's ankle. The hunter made a satisfied noise and stepped inconspicuously out of range while Prowl stared.

"They're useless for anyone but you: your waist is just short of six spans, and that narrows my resale market-scope down to bite-sized pleasure-models and limp-jacked post-protoforms," Lockdown grumbled in disgust. He nudged one with his foot. "Swindle doesn't handle custom mods, and they don't do any good sitting in my workshop like kitsch."

_Collecting dust and making me think of you,_ he would never say.

Then again, there were a lot of unsaid things. Things like: sorry about last month, I got a little towed away, there. Thought it would win you over. Never would've really done it, but some 'bots like that. Some people like being taken control of, and you seemed like you needed a shorter leash. It was fun, though, right? Maybe I was wrong. I can be wrong. It'll be better next time.

Most were lies, of course, but they were just as silent as the truths.

"I'm sure that rust-bucket Medibot of yours knows enough about interconnective circuitry to screw them on so they stay, but you'll have to deal with asking him on your own. I don't get involved in family scuffles, 'specially not about what Princess is or isn't gonna leave the house dressed in."

Inwardly, Prowl smiled. Family. He surveyed the chaotic but safe pile of modifications, each tenderly wrapped in their protective coverings. No dust. No price. His confusion was strong, but not nearly as strong as his relief, even considering the unwanted messenger. He looked up at the bounty hunter.

"Why?" He asked softly.

Lockdown grunted.

"Because 'family' is a nasty little social concept that should've gone offline with steam-power, and you look damn nice in those 'mods."

Prowl's flat mouth twitched.

"No. Why are you doing this?"

"Professional courtesy," Lockdown answered after a moment. After Prowl had stared at him for cycles with nothing but a poisonous neutrality, the bounty hunter shook his head.

"Pit. Mostly, I just, ah… I want you online, kid."

"May I ask why?"

Lockdown's optics flickered darkly at Prowl's tone, then narrowed. He would've killed to have Prowl interested in him before, but this qualified as too many questions. Goodwill should be taken as a gift, not interrogated for intent. Don't look a formally bestowed mini-con in the diagnostic display, as they say.

The ninja arched a brow patiently. Lockdown ground his teeth.

"For when you change your mind about our situation," he finally growled.

The petty euphemism killed him.

"Our situation," Prowl repeated calmly, watching the bounty hunter with care. Lockdown clenched his servo in a sudden spurt of aggravation, then ran it along his hook restlessly.

"You're the only 'bot I'd consider doin' this for, Prowl. I mean that."

The crushed flicker of zeal in his vocals was not missed. Lockdown raised his servos as Prowl suddenly rattled onto his feet (hiding the small, fizzling agony and resistance from his dead leg). He took a civil step back. "Don't get your wires knotted, I'm not here to get you on a berth again. I don't have any more to say than this: if your crazy attack showed me anything besides a healthy bill for a new vocal processor, it's that you're something special, kid. You pulled one over on me, and that's slaggin' hard to do. You don't need to be down here. That's all."

Lockdown looked to the side, setting his jaw. Cockeyed desperation--boiled and purified to fiery liquor by slow, solitary solar-cycles in strange galaxies, all spent with Prowl's golden, oil-stained shuriken in his hands and his empty 'mods on the shelf and that brief flicker of _sentient contact_ running over and over in his core--stirred just underneath the stormy white surface of him.

"So… My offer's still open. Just gimme a ring and I'll come pick you up."

Prowl nodded slowly. If he suffered a violent surge of disbelief, it didn't crack his placid façade.

"Thank you, Lockdown," he said. "For the modifications."

Nature filled their long silence with sweet noises. Lockdown looked him over, expression stripped of something warm and reassuring—hope, optimism—as he searched Prowl's blank face, then turned toward the lake and began walking. The Autobot waited until he was a good distance away before limping up to the pile of modifications and gingerly hefting the stylized gold helmet into his hands. He turned around with the gift close to his chest and called out:

"By the way, Lockdown. One last word."

The bounty hunter twitched around, staring at him and radiating a sudden tension. Prowl smiled serenely.

"It is never wise to say someone is your only option. It takes away all negotiability."

Lockdown's mouth twisted grimly.

"Touché," he rumbled, and left.


End file.
